This article gives a funny look at 25 of the worst characteristics of crummy network administrators. Unfortunately, too many probably happen in most offices.
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Here's the first 5:1. No priority for priority: Each new day in the TCP/IP world brings a host of new tasks, some trivial, others critical, and still others perceived as critical though they are not. Besides these, you also have items in your backlog folder that need to be addressed at the earliest possible time. So the best way to screw up your schedule (and that of your users) is to “run from pillar to post” attempting to set things right, without assigning priority to the most severe problems first, without tracking the status of all the requests that pour in, and without documenting the time, tools and methods spent on addressing and resolving each issue.
2. Be busy, not productive: The shortest route to this trick: do not automate recurring tasks, and under no circumstances should you find permanent solutions to common problems. You don’t need to know that you can simplify your work with tools – Neo, NetFlow, MRTG, Oak, TCPDUMP, ping – none of these are a regular part of your vocabulary. And you certainly don’t need to take the trouble to customize some of them using a scripting language. And finally, you don’t need to know that you can use the UPS in a major file server to send an automatic email each time there’s a power spike.
3. Say no to knowing your network: Monitoring your servers and your network interface is unnecessary, simply because you have no need to know how much traffic is traveling about your network. Regular observation of your network provides you with knowledge on normal, trouble-free usage, which in turn helps you identify problem spots and potential causes when youÂ’re called to troubleshoot and plan for future growth. This is not necessary for a terrible network administrator.
4. Bye to Backups: Data is the lifeblood of any organization and probably the most valuable part of a network. Bad network administrators do not have reliable backup measures, do not backup data regularly, and do not have effective recovery plans for system data that is lost or corrupted.
5. Knowledge is dangerous: Identifying new security issues before they become problems is possible with a little research, yet incompetent network administrators are not concerned with such things. They donÂ’t care to know when the new upgrade is out, or how to combat the latest forms of intrusion.
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